


after

by alchemystique



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 06:56:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12721800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: He presses his lips into her hair and breathes deep, chest expanding against her side, arm curled around her, and Karen thinks -Do we deserve this?





	after

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for The Punisher if you’re not up to date on trailers and released clips.
> 
> Also some pretty dark inferences about Karen’s backstory that are probably way off base but nothing explicit. Kind of a choose your own story kind of inferences.
> 
> Frank Castle likes funk music pass it on.

He presses his lips into her hair and breathes deep, chest expanding against her side, arm curled around her, and Karen thinks -

_Do we deserve this?_

_\------_

She thinks _-_

_-swirls of feelings-_

and

_-I’m already dead-_

and

_-Please-_

and then she remembers the look in his eyes as he’d confronted her about her secrets, remembers the way he’d stared her down as she confirmed what he already knew, remembers the gentle terror in his eyes when she asked him if he was there for her. 

Remembers the gruff way he’d chuffed his chin at her, reaching to close the folder of intel she has no idea where or how he’d found, the way he’d knelt down, and held her gaze even as she dragged in uneven breaths into lungs that felt weighed down with lead.

“He hurt you?”  


Through red rimmed eyes she’d blinked at him. “No.” And for a second, she’d wanted it. She’d wanted him to pull out one of the guns he had on him, wanted him to stand and press it to her temple, she wanted it to be over, she _deserved_ it, but - “There were people. Others. He. He hurt them.”

He’d nodded, slipped the folder from the table, turned towards her bathroom. She’d been confused enough to follow him, and when he tossed the thing in her tub and flicked open a Zippo, Karen had burst into crazed laughter, tears streaming down her face, because she’d hidden that secret for so long and if he’d found it, if Ben and Ellison knew even part of the story then someone else could find it too, but she let him burn it, let him lean against the frame of her bathroom door, quiet and watchful, while she laughed herself through her tears. 

She remembers because for the first time in years, someone had _known_ her, completely, fully, no sugar coating and no lies - and they’d stayed.

\------

_“This isn’t a life, Karen!”_ Foggy told her, once, when The Punisher was still alive and Karen was still a journalist and instead of going on dates with nice men and hanging out at bars with her friends, she spent her nights wading through the shit for her next story, or sharing a pizza and a beer in her apartment with a vigilante she knew would leave her place to kill people.  


_“Are you happy?”_ Matt asked her, once, newly returned from the dead (not dead, he was never dead, just another lie, and that wasn’t fair to Matt but she just wanted _someone_ in her life who appreciated truth and honesty even when it was messy, even when it hurt), and Karen blinked owlishly, stared at him, wondered if he could hear the thundering of her heart in her ribcage. “Does he...?”   


“He doesn’t _hurt_ me,” she’d told him, pointedly, knowing he’d understand what she meant. It was the biggest lie she ever told because Frank Castle had caused her pain before she ever even knew him, and now, now he’d torn out her heart and ripped it to pieces and he’d stomped on what was left and every day he’d stumble back to the broken pieces and sew them back together, more gently than he ever did anything else, which only made it hurt worse.   


_“I’m going to make him watch,”_ Fisk told her, calmly, his hand around her throat while Frank’s cries echoed in the empty warehouse, while Karen scrambled for purchase against the wall behind her, lightheaded and sure she was dead. “Do you love her, Mr. Castle?” Karen had hated him, hated him more than she thought she could hate a person, but in that moment she hadn’t been afraid of dying. She’d been afraid of letting Frank live in a world where Karen Page was dead.  


_“Karen...please...”_ She’d swallowed the lump in her throat and stared at her brother as he begged her to help him, to save him, but she couldn’t - she couldn’t save him, she couldn’t save him because he was _wrong_ , he was broken, because she’d done this to him and she couldn’t change her mind now.  


_“What if I deserve it?”_   


_\------_

He slides his fingers into her hair, presses his nose against her cheek, curls his arms around hers and whispers “What if we just left?”

He’s covered in blood and gore, in bruises and in the memories of all the people they’ve destroyed between them, and he carries her ghosts as well as his own, tucks them beneath his skin, stares at her like she is a terrifying beast of legend come to take his soul, like he would fall to his knees and give it to her if she so much as asked.

“Okay,” she says, and he nods against her ear, lips pressed against her pulse point.  


“Okay,” he says, broken and tired and done.  


She says goodbye to everything she’s known, but she’s done this before, sloughing off an old life. It barely even hurts this time around.

\------

“Do we deserve this?” she asks him, his fingers curled into hers as they stroll down a quiet street where people pass them by with a smile and a wave. She’s interrupted his off-key rendition of Superstition, and he pauses, turns to look at her. “I’m not sure we deserve this. We were... we did things that...”

His adams apple bobs, he glances up and down the street, lip quirking in greeting as their neighbor waves from a storefront. His hair is trimmed neatly but it curls wildly around his ears anyway, and the sun shines on them both. 

“Frank Castle and Karen Page are _dead_ ,” he tells her, with enough conviction that she almost believes him, his voice rough around the edges, and she savors it, wonders if, of the two of them, she’s the fucked up one, for missing the rumbling scratch of the voice of a dead man. “We deserve an after.”

Her eyes tumble closed when he curls his hand against her cheek, avoiding his gaze as he tilts his head to catch her eye - only for a moment, just one _moment -_ because she knows he’d never lie to her, and she wants him to be right. 

She wants him to be right, because he’s so _good_ , here, far away from everything either one of them ever knew, but Karen still sees ghosts, she still bites back the urge to dig a bit deeper when something seems out of the ordinary, curls her lips against her teeth to keep from asking him if he thinks the couple across the street is hiding something, she’s still broken, and _wrong,_ and one day Frank is going to realize it.

\------

_We deserve this_ , she whispers to her ghosts, the ones Frank let go because he thought they didn’t matter anymore, and Frank stirs beside her, huffing in his sleep. He doesn’t wake.

_We **deserve** this_, she tells the dead, staring at the peaceful stillness of Frank’s sleeping face, the slow, even breaths he takes, and she thinks

_-endless, echoing loneliness-_

and

_-you’re not a monster, you’re not-_

and

_-what if this is just who i am now?-_

And she thinks of the way Frank looks at her, like she could tear him apart and he’d thank her for it, like he needs her, like she’s precious and terrible all at once. And she thinks 

_-You don’t need to keep me safe-_

and how he always had anyway.

_**He** deserves this_, she tells her demons, and curls around him again, presses her nose into his skin, listens to the steady rumble of his heart, and promises herself she will carry his ghosts under her skin. 

She’ll be the monster, this time.


End file.
